


Giveaway fic #3

by ConsultingPurplePants



Series: 500 Tumblr Followers Giveaway Fics [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Drinking, Love Confessions, M/M, drinking game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-26 05:41:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6226171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConsultingPurplePants/pseuds/ConsultingPurplePants
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John decides they need to play a drinking game in order to protect the flat from Sherlock's boredom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Giveaway fic #3

**Author's Note:**

> This one is for [@aquabelacqua](http://aquabelacqua.tumblr.com) :)
> 
> The prompt was:  
>  _Hi! Thank you again for offering this contest. I have so many ideas but don't want to overthink it so here's one of my favorite tropes: admission of love/attraction during game play. Public (e.g. w/ the Yard) or private, drunk or sober, fluff or NSFW, any game will do (Truth or Dare, board games, etc.)-writer's choice. I want you to be inspired so I'm staying vague on purpose. I know whatever you write will be amazing. Thank you! Je souhaite que mon francais soit mieux! (_

Sherlock is just debating whether or not having another crack at shooting the wall would be wise when he hears John sit heavily on the floor behind him. There’s the distinct clink of a bottle hitting the ground, then what sounds like a box. He turns, curious.

“John?”

John jokingly toasts with the bottle of whiskey, then takes a swig.

“All right. We haven’t had a case in two weeks and I can see you itching to do something crazy.” He waggles his finger at Sherlock when he opens his mouth to protest. “We’re going to play True or False Storytime!”

Sherlock looks him up and down. His hair is a little frizzier than usual, as though he’s been running his hand through it. His clothes seem fine, but his feet are bare. The bottle isn’t very empty, but it isn’t full, either. What really gives him away, however, is the slightly feverish glint in his eyes, and Sherlock takes a moment to think this through.

While this would definitely be the most opportune moment to get some interesting information out of John (which, he assumes, is the premise behind the ridiculously-named _True or False Storytime_ ), John could also end up regretting this quite a lot in the morning. He tries to make an internal list of pros and cons, but before he can even start considering each side, John throws a dice at his head.

“Sit your arse down here so I can explain the rules,” he says, and Sherlock sits his arse down.

John grins. “Each bit of paper has a word on it.” He shakes the box for emphasis.

“So when it’s your turn, you pick a bit of paper, then roll the dice. If you get an even number, you have to tell me a true story about the word on the paper—.”

“And if it’s an odd number I invent something, yes, so far, so obvious, where does the drinking come in? Do I drink if you guess correctly or only if I guess wrong?” Sherlock snaps. This game was meant to stave off boredom, not cause it.

John’s grin gets even wider. “Why not both?”

Sherlock rolls his eyes, but accepts the box when John thrusts it across at him. He unfolds a piece of paper to read Knife, then rolls a 2.

“I once identified a suspect by deducing that the shape of the concealed knife in his ankle sheath was perfect for removing molars,” he says.

John huffs, but guesses. “True.”

Sherlock nods, but John looks slightly exasperated rather than triumphant.

“What?” he asks as he accepts the bottle.

“You’re supposed to make it hard to guess, you git. That was way too obvious,” John replies.

“But you won that round,” Sherlock points out, taking a swig. The whiskey burns and he fights the urge to sputter.

“Yeah, but it was too easy,” John insists. He pauses for a moment, then announces, “You have to drink a second time because that was a crap story.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes, but accepts his punishment. The whiskey burns slightly less the second time around, but he doesn’t drink very often, and he’s starting to feel his two large gulps. He hopes his cheeks aren’t as red as they feel. He looks up to check, but John is already digging through the box. He waits as John rolls the dice.

“When I was fifteen, I dated a girl who had a hamster and the hamster would watch us while we were… doing stuff,” he says.

The story is inane, but effectively hard to guess. Sherlock looks John up and down for tells, but for once, he can’t seem to spot any (perhaps John’s inebriation is blocking them; he certainly isn’t drunk enough). He hates himself, but is forced to guess. “True?”

John grins as he hands him the bottle. “See? Gotta keep it confusing. It was a chinchilla, actually,” he corrects as Sherlock takes another gulp. This time, he does sputter a little. He hopes John hasn’t noticed.

He digs through the box, and this time comes up with Sex. He rolls a 3 and almost immediately thinks of a statement, screwing his face up as convincingly as he can.

“No one can ever stand my deductions for long, so no one has ever liked me enough to have sex with me,” he murmurs.

John’s face twists slightly in a way he’s never seen before, and he doesn’t quite know what to do about it. John’s voice is nearly a whisper when he hesitantly responds, “True?”

Sherlock triumphantly hands him the bottle. “False! I’m not a virgin, you know.”

John takes a swig, but his face looks more confused now than anything else. “So you _have_ … had sex? With another person?”

“Yes. Twice, in uni, for cocaine,” he says, his tongue suddenly feeling loose. “He wasn’t worth the relationship.”

Something like grief flashes across John’s face, but Sherlock can’t quite figure out why. He ends the suddenly tense silence by thrusting the box back at John. He waits while John goes through the overly complicated steps of the game.

“When I was in the army, I was in a long-term relationship,” he begins, but just before Sherlock can demand why _he’s_ allowed to tell such obvious stories, he continues. “With James.”

Sherlock is proclaiming, “False!” before he even knows what hit him. John would never do two things that are necessary for this scenario: one, invite his long-term ex to his wedding, and two, _sleep with a man_. He’s shouted _Not Gay!_ often enough.

There’s something different in John’s smile, this time, and Sherlock looks down in shock at the bottle suddenly in his hands. His hands are shaking as he takes his biggest swig yet, letting the liquid warm his throat. It does nothing to kick start his suddenly paralyzed brain.

This time, John is the one who does something about the silence. “I’m bisexual. I didn’t think you’d deduced that yet, but I also can’t quite believe you hadn’t.”

Sherlock’s mouth opens and closes more times than he can count, his heart surging through his chest and his already flushed cheeks feeling even warmer. He can feel his muscles loosening, and he knows that in the end, he probably should have refused to play this and taken his chances with the wall-shooting, because he’s going to be the one who says something he’ll regret.

Because, as it turns out, the reason they haven’t ended up together isn’t that John doesn’t want men. It’s that John doesn’t want _him_.

He looks up, expecting John to be waiting for him to start his turn, but instead meets widened, bottomless, cobalt blue eyes. They’re roaming over his face, his eyes, searching for something, and when they find it, John gives a sharp intake of breath. He looks just as shocked as Sherlock, and Sherlock can’t even begin to understand why. He picks a piece of paper to distract himself.

_Microscope_ , 4.

He hates that he still has to compose himself before speaking.

“I got my first microscope at age six, and the first things I examined were my dog’s cheek cells.”

His voice barely wavers.

“True,” John says quietly. Somehow, he doesn’t sound like he’s enjoying himself as much anymore, and Sherlock hates that this is just another thing that he can’t offer John. He hands him the bottle, not feeling any triumph this time.

“False. It was his saliva,” he says. John drinks, but his eyes are solemn, and they never leave Sherlock’s.

He sifts through the box, rolls the dice, speaks.

“When I was invalided home from the army, my friend Mike introduced me to the craziest, most brilliant man I have ever met. He took me to a single crime scene, and that was it. I’ve been in love with him ever since, but I didn’t think he’d ever want me that way. So I never told him.”

Sherlock feels the burning humiliation through every single one of his veins. It hurts, it’s agony, to have everything he’d dreamed of thrown out at him as part of a lie in a ridiculous game. He drinks without even guessing.

The answer is obvious enough. The shame only intensifies when he feels tears start to burn at the corners of his eyes.

“What are you doing? You haven’t even guessed yet.”

He refuses to look up because he can’t. If he does, the tears will fall. John will know. John will leave. Bisexual or not, he doesn’t want Sherlock that way and this would only complicate their arrangement.

He nearly jumps out of his skin when he feels a warm palm close over the top of his clenched fist.

Lips graze his right temple.

Two fingers lift his chin.

“True,” John says gently, his eyes meeting Sherlock’s with an intensity he realizes he should have recognized before. There’s barely enough time for most of his mind palace to suddenly catch fire before John’s lips are pressed solidly, warmly, perfectly, against his own.

There’s a moment where neither of them moves, and then Sherlock’s arms fly up to crush John to himself, his hands frantically fisting in the back of John’s jumper. John’s hands end up in his hair as his lips part slightly, John’s tongue gently stroking across his upper lip, and it’s bliss. John’s hands are stroking through his hair, sometimes tugging slightly on his curls, and he’s just so delightfully, perfectly close that Sherlock can’t breathe. John pulls back and Sherlock crushes his face into his jumper.

“I love you,” he tells the jumper, his voice cracking. He doesn’t care.

“I’ve always loved you,” John tells the top of his head, and somehow, that’s what makes Sherlock breathe again.


End file.
